Technology Uplift

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Many civilizations that have access to technology more advanced than modern day humanity in speculative fiction works have some sort of law against sharing tech with "lower" peoples. But then there are those who not only are willing to trade with the local primitives, they might even see it as their "duty" in some way.

If a work has both a civilization that uplifts and one that doesn't interfere, they can be portrayed in one of two ways depending on the author's sympathies. The uplifters could be exploitative imperialists who use their "clients" for cheap labor, or those who refuse to share tech could be stuck-up elitists who treat less advanced societies like wildlife. Rarely, both sides will be sympathetic, with no clear right answer.

This is also done to a lesser extent in Watchmen. Ozymandias is a genius and Doc Manhatten can create and manipulate matter, allowing them to bring about electric cars and hover crafts, which the hero Nite Owl flies. It should be noted that Alan Moore wrote both this example and the example above.

Unlike most advanced civilizations, which nearly all have an Alien Non-Interference Clause, the Celestial Empire in The (Questionable) Burdens of Leadership of a Troll Emperor has no problems sharing their technology. But only of course if you join said empire. Given that said empire has technology a couple centuries ahead of Earth (and thousands of years ahead of most other planets) and joining doesn't entail much more than "Follow our laws", most planets welcome them openly.

They're more than capable of defending themselves from all but the most powerful entities on the planet, and the pre-feudal tribes populating the area they land in aren't even speed bumps.

Their fabrication equipment survived the crash, and is more than capable of maintaining their bodies indefinitely.

Bad News:

Their fabrication equipment is not capable of self-replication and thus would take over three millennia to build the tools to build the tools(etc) to re-connect with interstellar civilization.

Their power source is going to fail in about twelve years.

They thus decide to uplift the locals in order to survive, and improving the general quality of life is pretty much paying them back in the process.

Literature

David Brin's Uplift series is the Trope Namer as with Uplifted Animal. There every sophont species in the known universe, with the possible exception of humanity, was both culturally and biologically uplifted by another species.

The Kzin of Larry Niven's Known Space universe were bootstrapped by another species to serve as mercenaries. Unfortunately, they then turned on and enslaved their patrons.

In Animorphs the Yeerks were given advanced technology by an Andalite named Seerow, whom the Andalites then named their Alien Non-Interference Clause after when the Yeerks used their new tech to conquer and enslave other species.

Deconstructed in the Strugatsky Brothers' Noon Universe, where this practice is called Progressorism. The authors explore everything necessary to transform a pre-modern society into a futuristic one, and social uplift receives much more attention than giving fancy gadgets. The later novels explore the question whether this practice is ethical by introducing a mysterious precursor alien race which possibly practices covert Progressorism on humans.

This practice is deconstructed in Sergey Lukyanenko's The Stars Are Cold Toys duology, where a Human Alien race nicknamed the Geometers engage in a more nefarious version. Their ultimate goal is Friendship with all known races. The achieve it with a two-stage process. First, they send in operatives known as Regressors, whose purpose is to do the opposite of this trope and force the native culture to a more primitive state (frequently through war), thus allowing their race to appear from the sky and graciously uplift them, also imposing their cultural views. The protagonist, a human who infiltrates the Geometer society as a Manchurian Agent in order to see if they would make good allies to humans is repulsed by this practice and resolves himself to avoid this fate for Earth (especially since Earth is already more primitive than they are). It's stated that they have already successfully integrated two alien races, native to their star system, into their culture, which also served to perfect their methods.

Humans decide to do this for the pequeninos ("piggies") at the end of Speaker for the Dead, and the sequels deal in part with the consequences. It turns out to be an extremely tricky balancing act.

Discussed in Wolfling by Gordon R. Dickson, where mankind meets an interstellar empire of Human Aliens. Every High-Born (a member of the ruling race) receives enough education to uplift a stone-age planet to the imperial level.

This is the goal of the Foundation for the Development of Alien Cultures. They initially focus on primitive Human Alien cultures, but later technological developments allow them to move on to Insectoid Aliens and others. The plot of the first novel involves the titular character being sent into the planet Osier to find out why the local humanoids have been stuck in Medieval Stasis for over a millennium with every attempt by the FDAC to subtly introduce new ideas and inventions failing miserably. It turns out that the planet is under the watch of another advanced race, who subscribe to the Alien Non-Interference Clause viewpoint. They are the ones who have been subverting human attempts at instigating progress, viewing stability as more important. It's also stated that centuries of studies and attempts have resulted in a fine-tuned system for how this trope is supposed to be done to avoid catastrophic consequences (which have happened in FDAC history, resulting in the destruction of several native cultures). One of the biggest rules is to never interfere in a post-Medieval culture.

Human themselves are indirectly the recipients of this trope starting with the second novel of the main Arrivals from the Dark series, of which Trevelyan's Mission is a spin-off, taking place centuries later. There, a shapeshifting alien infiltrator helps a human defeat a powerful Alien Invasion force in such a way as to leave their technology largely intact, allowing humans to study and implement technology that, eventually, turns humanity in a galactic superpower.

This is the primary goal of Merlin Athrawes. The planet Safehold was intended to be a colony where humanity could hide from the xenocidal Gbaba temporarily. To avoid detection, they deliberately abstained from high technology and the original goal was to have their descendants begin reclaiming it in a few centuries. The operation's leaders, however, were megalomaniacs who thought humanity's hubris brought its near-destruction on itself. As a result, they set up a civilization whose Church has enforced a Medieval Stasis for nearly a thousand years and made themselves out to be its Archangels and those who opposed them as demons and devils. Enter Merlin, who allies himself with Charis, a country that's quite innovative despite all of the above and helps push them even further. He has to take things relatively slow to avoid upsetting the local sensibilities regarding advancing technology and getting them all declared demonic, he's still able to get Charis' technological level from man-rowed galleys to ironclad battleships within a decade.

As the series progresses, a balancing act is formed as Merlin is able to bring more local Safeholdians into the knowledge he possesses. The Empire of Charis wages its open war with the technology and innovations Merlin's introduced, but the "Inner Circle" is given access to far higher technology such as near-omnipresent spying capabilities and long-distance communication among each other to better plan and strategize. This frequently imposes limits such as not being able to react to events they've seen happen until official word reaches them, or Merlin having to fake travel time when he could (and has) simply used his recon skimmer to get where he needs in hours. Also, despite his loyalty to Charis, his duty to his ultimate mission requires him to make sure the Church gets the chance to make those same innovations and level the playing field since that breaks the Medieval Stasis mindset the Church enforces.

In Star Carrier, several alien races are stated to have been given space travel technology by some hyper-advanced race long ago. While the humans initially assume that those aliens are the Sh'daar, many start doubting this, especially since the goal of the Sh'daar is limiting technology along certain paths. Those alien races are stated as being incapable of reaching space on their own due to their physiology or the conditions of their homeworld. For example, the H'rulka are huge colony organisms from a gas giant, who were unable to make technological progress on their planet due to inability of obtaining heavy elements in a gaseous environment. Generally, unless someone else gives them a push, these races end up stuck at a certain level of development and never leave their planets. After making into space, however, they're generally pretty good at continuing on their own thanks to obtaining resources on asteroids. The Slan are a race, whose primary sense is echolocation, and their rudimentary light-sensing organ is unable to detect the faint light of stars. This means it took them far longer than most to develop astronomy, only after building their equivalent of a telescope, which, in their case, is a device that converts visual images into understandable sounds. Even then, the concept of space is foreign to them. They treat it as an enormous airless cavern that can only be crossed with the use of spaceships.

In Harry Harrison's Deathworld 2, interstellar adventurer Jason dinAlt is stranded on a Lost Colony which has regressed to barbarism. Various bits and pieces of more advanced technology, generally regarded more or less as sorcery, are held as closely guarded secrets by the different clans (one group still knows how to make primitive petroleum-fueled engines, another how to make some crude electrical devices, yet another clan practices alchemy-level chemistry). The hero winds up completely revolutionizing the planet's backwater society solely out a desire to get off that primitive dirtball and back to someplace more civilized. The language issue is avoided as everyone on the planet speaks a (somewhat degraded) version of Esperanto.

Interestingly, Jason manages to make working engines despite claiming that no one knows how internal combustion engines work anymore.

In Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep, two groups on a medieval planet get technological advice, but not physical help, from stranded human children with, respectively, a small computer and an FTL phone, allowing them both to advance significantly. It helps enormously that the child's computer has a full history of technology stored, while the people on the other end of the phone can look up theoretical academic research on bringing technology to lost colonies, which is apparently a minor academic discipline in that galaxy.

Live Action TV

Probably the most famous example is the "To Serve Man" episode of The Twilight Zone (1959), in which alien benefactors arrive on Earth and provide technology that ends war by nullifying all weaponry, cures to all known diseases, and other remarkable benefits of their advanced technology. In the now-stock twist, it turns out it's all a scheme to make human helpless and dependent so they can be bred as food stock.

In "Underworld" it is revealed that early in their history the Time Lords offered technology uplift to the planet Minyos, only for the Minyans to kick them out and then get into an internecine war with their new advanced weapons that devastated the planet. The Time Lords subsequently adopted an Alien Non-Interference Clause.

In "The Horns of Nimon" the Nimon claim they're going to provide advanced technology to the Skonnos, but in actuality the Nimon are going to denude the planet of everything.

A lot of the technology of the known Younger Races derive from Centauri technology aquired when they were Centauri subjects (they also make a few attempts to justify their first conquest and enslavement of the Narns as bringing them to the stars). Ironically, the Centauri themselves got to the stars when they themselves received a technological boost from passing Technomages, who taught them enough to allow them to defeat the Shroggen invasion (the Shroggen being there because they were chasing the Technomages to begin with) and then reverse-engineer their technology.

After losing much of their empire the Centauri started selling technology to less advanced races with the intention of making them economically dependant. The strategy ultimately failed when the Narn conquered their independence and started selling weapons comparable to what the Centauri were willing to sell.

Backfired horribly when they tried it with Earth Alliance: realizing what the Centauri were trying to do, the human government decided to buy as little technology as they could and reverse-engineer it]], allowing Earth Alliance to become a major power-one that rivals the Centauri, and occupied a number of abandoned and resource-rich Centauri systems before they got around reclaiming them.

The Earth Alliance's policy is to construct jump gates in new systems and charge any natives tolls to use them.

A frequent dilemma for the more advanced races in Stargate SG-1 is whether or not to do this. Most races are reluctant to provide Earth any advanced technology due to either bad prior experiences, such as the Tollan who in the past gave a lower-tech planet an unlimited energy source only for them to blow themselves up the day after, or believing Earth is not yet mature enough as a civilization. The main exceptions are the Asgard, who owe Earth, and the Tok'ra, with whom Earth was in an alliance.

A episode also features the Aschen, a race that appear to do this but are doing so for their own ends.

As the series progresses, and Earth becomes a (if not the) major power in the galaxy, the protagonists face this dilemma themselves from time to time. They're usually willing to provide things like food, medicine, and knowledge, but not weapons technology.

As shown on Star Trek: Voyager, before adopting the Prime Directive, the United Earth Space Probe Agency sent out Friendship 1, a warp-capable probe that contained a great deal of cultural and technological information as a gesture of peace and friendship towards any other intelligent species. As shown in the episode "Friendship One", it was a good thing they sent only one. Centuries later, the probe reached a Delta Quadrant planet called Uxal, and its inhabitants eagerly upgraded their planetary power grid to make use of anti-matter (and also built anti-matter missiles). Since they didn't have any experience in working with it, an accident resulted in the entire power grid exploding and putting the planet into a long nuclear winter. Naturally, the remaining Uxali aren't big fans of humans, as they think that the probe was an intentional attempt to destroy a potential rival.

"A Private Little War". The Klingons are arming an Iron Age culture with increasingly sophisticated black powder muskets (rifled barrels were about to be introduced when Kirk and company intervene). The Federation responds in kind by similarly arming a different faction of that culture in a very anvilicious parable about the Cold War.

A similar thing happens in "A Piece of the Action": The inhabitants of an imitative culture get a book from a visiting starship, "Chicago Mobs of the '30s", and model their entire society around it. When McCoy discovers he's left his communicator behind, Kirk postulates that they may find it and remodel their society after Federation technology.

Other Sites

SCP Foundation, SCP-2525 ("Extraterrestrial Broadcaster"). SCP-2525-1 (formerly Junior Researcher L____) has said that the aliens that sent SCP-2525 (the rocket-like device) did so to provide plans for advanced technology to humanity, and that they had done so for other primitive races as well.

The Vilani Imperium did this with the civilizations of planets it added. This included molding the civilization to fit the Vilani culture. At first, they allowed their client states to trade with non-integrated planets, but after a few wars they clamped down hard on them and turned into a state so rigid they stopped expansion just short of running into Earth.

Classic Adventure 2 Research Station Gamma. After the planet Vanejen was re-contacted by the Third Imperium, the Imperial Navy showed uncommon (for them) discretion by giving the planet more scientific knowledge and advanced technology in a gradual manner so it wouldn't cause culture shock.

The Hiver Federation is known for manipulating low-tech species to accelerate their development and form cultures friendly to them. Some suspect them of doing the same to humaniti, and in fact after the collapse of the Third Imperium they openly teach some of their tech to the Reformation Coalition.

Unscrupulous player character merchants can sell TL12 weapons to TL1 societies.

In Mindjammer this is the Commonality's preferred method of assimilating lost colonies, usually starting by installing a local Mindscape node. Though some planets are deemed "unacceptable" and quarantined for some time. They also have a habit of letting Corporacies do most of the work.

Warhammer 40,000: The Tau are willing to share their advanced plasma rifles with some of their auxiliaries, though of course they don't give them the tech to build them.

The Imperium of Man forcibly does this to any lost human colonies they find, which have often reverted to medieval (or in extreme cases Stone Age) technology levels. Being wildly xenophobic, they of course do not uplift any non-humans. Also, the Imperium only provides enough tech to make a planet useful to their war effort. Most often lost colonies become Agri-Worlds or recruiting grounds for the Imperial Guard, in which case they rarely have more than animal power.

The Emperor himself previously did this when he first led the Great Crusade to reclaim all human worlds and form the Imperium, humanities original civilisation having collapsed due to warp storms cutting off most planets from interstellar travel (and, this being Warhammer, plenty of infighting, alien attacks, robot rebellions, and so on to help the collapse along). He tended to be a bit nicer about it when first approaching a planet, but ultimately wouldn't take no for an answer.

In Myriad Song the Syndics uplifted all of the Myriad races, but treated most of them as slaves. Still, many revere them as "the Patrons".

The krogan were a Proud Warrior Race which managed to destroy the bulk of their civilization in a nuclear war. In come the salarians, who gave the krogan interstellar drive tech and space age weapons, because they needed soldiers hardy enough to stop the rachni invasion. Unfortunately, this has Gone Horribly Right: the rachni were wiped out, but the krogan started a massive wave of expansion and became more of a menace to other species than rachni ever were, forcing the other sentient races of the galaxy to use a Depopulation Bomb and drive the krogan to near extinction once more.

Mordin: Like giving nuclear weapons to cavemen.

In Mass Effect 3 Javik reveals that the Prothean Empire's modus operandi was to guide primitive races to the space age, then give them the choice between joining them or extinction. When the Reaper invasion began they were just starting on humans and asari, and abandoned those races so the Reapers would leave them alone.

Thousands of years before the current setting, the asari discovered the elcor homeworld and taught them to use mass effect technology, allowing them to join the galactic community.

One species, the drell, come from a planet where they peaked in fossil fuel consumption extremely early. As such, their population exploded while they polluted and strip-mined their own planet to the point that a major population crash was imminent. A race called the hanar brought a fleet of ships to the planet and saved the few hundred thousand drell that they could. Those drell were uplifted to the galactic community while the billions of others killed each other in nuclear war before more help could arrive.

According to extra materials between games, a species called the raloi were discovered by the asari between the second and third game and brought to the galactic community. However, when the Reapers invaded the galaxy and conquered the worlds of any spacefaring species, the raloi retreated back to their homeworld and destroyed all advanced technology in the hopes that the Reapers would consider them a "pre-spaceflight" species.

A species called the yahg were discovered a few decades before the series began, and an emissary group was sent to make First Contact with them. The yahg, a super-intelligent and hyper-aggressive species, killed the emissaries and contact was immediately cut. However, we learn in DLC for the second game that one was brought off world and made an agent of the Shadow Broker. By the time we meet him, he's taken over his boss's old gig. In the third game, we learn that the salarian government considered that uplifting the yahg en-masse would make for good agents and shock troops.

In Spore the player can do this on planets they visit by planting a Monolith there. If there are already civilized beings, they'll soon achieve spacefaring status; if not, a random animal species will be quickly evolved to that level.

Edge gives some Green Rocks to 1950s alternate Earth so they can make an antimatter reactor. It ends up destroying the entire planet. This encourages Edge to sponsor the UP3 (Underdeveloped Planet Protection Pact) to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future.

As Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a prequel, the other Star Ocean games mention the UP3 occasionally and have to work around its restrictions.

In Wildstar the Dominion uplifted the Draken and Chua so that they could serve the empire. In the Chua's case they took to advanced technology so well that after strip-mining their homeworld in less than a century they became the Dominon's top scientists and mechanics.

In Galactic Civilizations the Arceans gave humanity the blueprints to a Warp Gate, which suspiciously had no "off" switch, but instead humans combined it with their fusion technology (which the Arceans may have wanted to take by invading) to develop a ship-portable hyperdrive. They then gave hyperdrive and fusion to every sapient species they could contact, and then the game begins.

In Stellaris it is possible to uplift pre-FTL species with "Enlightenment" missions and have them join your Empire as a protectorate. It's fairly expensive and can take a long time depending on the species' starting tech level, ranging from 40-500 months, and if your Empire's primary species is Xenophobic they won't like it. Alternately, you can invade the planet, which causes a "culture shock" penalty as the local species are raised immediately to the space age without being properly introduced, or infiltrate their leadership which doesn't carry the culture shock penalty.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: The story looks like it's set in the far future, with all manner of advanced weapons, holograms, FTL ships, Humongous Mecha, etc. However, the opening states that the story is set in 2042 AD, not nearly enough time for all that tech to be invented. Indeed, if one looks closely, most of humanity's technology that isn't related to weaponry or space travel is no more advanced than modern tech. A character near the end of the game Lampshades this, asking how in the hell humans have mecha, nigh-impenetrable energy shields, and other tech of that sort when all evidence says they're not that advanced. Turns out a friendly alien gave humanity a whole bunch of tech, knowing that Earth was going to be attacked in a few decades and giving humanity the means to survive it.

The central conflict in Might and Magic VII centres around a dispute between two factions of an interstellar crew (ironically from a culture no more advanced itself, but they've learned a lot during the trip) about the best way to go about this. One faction argues for settling down and uplifting the world they're on specifically, with a later hardening into forcibly (if their path is followed they repair an ancient replication device and mass-produce energy weapons for a world conquest bid). The other faction still has an interest in trying to find the Ancients who actually developed all the advanced technology floating around, so their goal is to finish the local entry-point to a Portal Network and use the contacts and resources found on other worlds to help raise everyone up while the Ancients are being searched for.

This is the reason behind the China-punk setting of Freedom Planet: The dominant kingdoms were originally straight-up similar to Earth's feudal China, but they were given access to technology from an extraterrestrial group of dragons who were stranded on the planet. With no means of communication with the rest of their civilization nor a means to leave the planet, they instead shared their technology and vast, nearly limitless energy source with the planet's inhabitants. The dragons had since also died off, the only surviving descendants being Lilac and Merga, neither of which have any knowledge of dragon engineering, so technology is more or less stuck at where it is.

It's mentioned in Star Control II that nearly all spacefaring races have been uplifted by another. The Yehat, in particular, take a rather paternal view toward the Shofixti for this reason. Humans are one of the very few races who made it into space all on our own.

In Terinu the Varn used this as their justification for conquering most of the sentient species in known space. When they tried this on humanity, who was already more advanced than most of the Varn's previous clients, we fought back and incited rebellions among the other races.

At the end of the arc parodying Star Trek Cmdr. Quinn tells a member of a species that the Federation left to the mercy of a Planet Eater because they were pre-spaceflight that the Empire will help them rebuild, and that their presence will no doubt screw up what was left but at least they'll treat them like people.

Another time, a member of a species the Empire had contacted fifty years earlier accused the Rangers of destroying his civilization by downloading blueprints for Matter Replicators into their network and causing an economic collapse. Quinn retorted that the real reason for the collapse was the native oligarchy's use of fiat currency to pillage the commoners, and that he had given them the technology they needed just to survive.

Web Original

In Cradleland, a man from twentieth century America had flown through a hyperspatial interstellar portal to a world populated by Transplanted Humans and got stranded there. He had patented a few inventions due to his technical knowledge, including a Stirling-cycle engine. He did not bring any radios though.

Infrastructure is an attempt to examine this from every angle; drop a space-age group in a flint-knapping era with nothing but Boomsticks and a complete tech database. Though they're able to get a lot accomplished really fast, it still takes them four decades to get to the Age of Steam, whereupon they get stuck; though they've peacefully claimed rich oil fields, they can't actually get the oil until they deal with the Age of Sail-era pirates who won't quit harassing their fleets.

In Orion's Arm, many Terragen polities have done as such to both Xenosophont clades and lost Terragen colonies. The To'ul'h for instance have largely integrated into Terragen society. And there are also colonies that forsook technology under the protection of a greater polity such as the Metasoft Version Tree's Baseline Preserves or many of the domains of the Caretaker Gods, though there is one story where a Caretaker manipulates eir charges into acquiring an Encyclopedia Everythingia from a visiting anthropologist.

Release That Witch: An overworked, overqualified 21st-century engineer falls asleep at his desk only to wake up in the body of a prince presiding over a witch beheading in a backwater town in a fantasy world on the brink of war. First thing he does is Release That Witch. Then he hires her to help him weld steam engines and guns. And the R&D just gets better and better until the town evolves into a mega-city with modern commodities (and Gwent). Interestingly, the main theme is about learning to accept and show gratitude to the mystical and unknown, especially when attempting to move forward - like using the magics of formerly persecuted witches to fill in the technological gaps with A Wizard Did It, when there's an important technological stepping stone the engineer has no understanding of.

Western Animation

The first appearance of Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons was a segment in the inaugural "Treehouse of Horror" episode offering a parody of the aforementioned Twilight Zone episode. In this one, the twist is that the aliens really are beneficent; it's Lisa's skepticism that robs mankind of their promised aid.

In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, two aliens (the Kiwi Zoso and the Andorian Waldo) from pacifist races trade hyperdrive technology for humanity's assistance in resisting The Crown Empire.

Played straight in some cases of people discovering "isolated people" and the eventual giving of current technology... at least to a partial extent.

To disastrous results. Much of the famine in Africa in the 1980s was directly attributable to this. Much of the aid to Africa in the earlier parts of the 20th century involved bringing tractors to farmers who were, up until that point, still using wooden plows for their fields. Initially, the tractors boosted farmer productivity greatly, causing population booms as food became plentiful. However, since the aid did not include parts, gasoline, or technicians, the tractors over time broke down and the farmers had no means to repair them. Made worse by the gasoline crisis of the 1970s, which made the tractors too expensive to run, even if they were still operable.

Thanks to its unique combination of being far too populous and too far away from traditional trade routes, Japan could benefit from this trope without being conquered by a Western nation (the usual result for non-Westerners when better armed Westerners showed up). It happened twice:

In the 1500s, the Portuguese introduced modern cannons and arquebuses. These were quickly reverse-engineered and popularized in Japan, changing the way warfare was done there forever. They even copied Spanish galleons in the early 1600s, but these designs were lost when Sakoku was implemented in 1633.

After 1853, when Perry's ships forced Japan to open to foreign trade. The Japanese readily adopted Western technology and military doctrine, becoming the only Asian nation to carve its own sphere of influence in the Age of Imperialism.

It also happened in some Polynesian islands during the 19th century. The natives readily adopted British guns and shipping technology and used it to unify Hawaii or conquer (and genocide) the Chatham Islands from New Zealand, for example. Other times, Western interference resulted in civil wars and ended with the carving up and colonization of the archipelago, such as in Samoa.

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